ImmuPharma CEO on P140 progress and expanded pipeline with Kapiglucagon

0:00I'm very pleased to be out another asset to the portfolio, which is funded and being developed, but our total focus has not been diverted one eye-ota in pushing forward those licensed discussions with P140, and I'm very, very confident we will deliver that deal. Hello, you're watching Proactive. I'm joined in the studio by Tim McCarthy, the CEO of Emure Farmer. Tim, very nice to have you in the studio again. It's nice to be back, Steve. General New Means, I've got something to talk about, so. Well, exact. Lost to talk about because you had an update on P140, a positive update. You also have a new development program, Capy Gluckagon, and a fundraiser. So, take us through the highlights of today's news because it seems there's a lot going on. There's an awful lot going on actually, so maybe I can just frame it for our discussion today. If I give you some brief highlights and then we can go into each one in a bit more detail. The first thing I want to say is P140 is our focus, and I don't want whatever we put out today

1:01in our RS to take away from that, and that's why we were keen to emphasize that things are progression on P140. We've still got the objective of completing the deal this year, and we're doing very well on that, and I'll come back and talk a little bit more about that. The second thing is we have really quite unexpectedly had the opportunity to bring one of our other programs in Portfolio. We haven't talked about a lot, a program called Capy Gluckagon. Bring it forward into an accelerated development program, and I think I remember at least one of our interviews in the past talking about perhaps seeing some things our portfolio come from left field, and this is certainly one of those, and it's going to add an awful lot of value to shareholders. And then the third highlight is to go along with the Capy Gluckagon development. In fact, it was prompted by the fact that we were quite unexpectedly offered funding by a number

2:06of our long-standing shareholders, and that's what's led to the funding that we announced today, led by Lancet Capital. So again, I'll talk a little bit more about each of those, or those are the highlights. Well, let's start with P140, because when you were in last time, we talked about partnering discussions. Where are you with those partnering discussions, Tim? Yeah, we're doing very well, actually, and again, I want to emphasize to everybody listening today that whatever we put out in the announcement today doesn't take away from our work on those licensing discussions. We're very busy. We've got a discussion going with a number of potential partners, and in fact, I believe the last time that I was in the studio here with you, Stephen, it was November, and given you an update on an RNS then. And since November, we've actually engaged with some new potential partners that have approached us, and are interested in P140, so it's a very, very active area. We are determined to find the right deal, the deal structure for shareholders, and for P140 itself, because clearly we want to

3:10progress P140 in its later stages to development. And that is absolutely our focus. We have said that we are delivering a deal this year. We're confident of doing that, and I just want to make sure everyone understands that, and that the fact that we've had a quite unexpected opportunity to develop Cappy Glukugon, quite separately, doesn't take away from P140 at all. In fact, it adds to the whole portfolio of the company, and adds real value to your help. Okay, so a very clear message on P140, Tim. Getting onto Cappy Glukugon, you say it's come left field. Tell us more about it, and also the associated fundraising, please. Of course. It's important to say it hasn't exactly gone from left field for us. But let me just go back to the fundraising again, because this is one that wasn't something that we were expecting to do, and I've been very clear in previous interviews and announcements that

4:12we were not going to go out and look for further funding whilst we were conducting our licensing discussion on P140. That in itself remained the case. However, quite unexpectedly, in a few weeks ago, we got a number of approaches from some of our longstanding shareholders, who continually see the undervaluation of the company, and they have money which they want to put in our disposal, and they approached us to say, look, I know you're working hard on P140, and that will bring its own value for shareholders. However, we're keen that we can help you to build your company, and I'm determined so as the team to build long-term value for shareholders, it's not all about P140, it doesn't have to be all about P140, although that is a major value driver, clearly. So when we're approached to say, look, we want to support you, we want to support

5:14the building of your portfolio, which is always going to be good for shareholders, have you got an asset in your portfolio, which we could fund, and so quite separately for anything else you're doing, so it doesn't disturb anything else. So we had a very sort of long thought about this on two fronts, Stephen one, is there a particular asset, which we could identify and could add value in relatively short order, but also taken into very serious consideration that we had said quite clearly before that we weren't going to raise money, so it wasn't a decision we made overnight, and I'm very aware of what I have said previously, so I don't want shareholders to take the wrong message here. We have specifically raised the money to develop Capigluckagon, and Capigluckagon is in the area of Type 1 diabetes, which I'll go on to talk about a little bit more in a moment, but it's a development asset which has been in the company for a while, it was discovered

6:16by our R&D team, led by Sebastian Guru, our CSO, in 217, patented in 218, so it's got a very, very good patent life, so running to 2038 with the potential for further patent extensions, and the way that the programmer is, I'll describe in a little bit more, it has the ability to go through a particular regulatory pathway called 505B2, which is an accelerated development process, so what we presented to those shareholders when they asked us for an idea to fund, it was very much an accelerated program for Capigluckagon for approximately a couple of years, and we secured the cornerstone funding for that through Lancet or as I think you will remember are a longstanding shareholder, and this will be the eighth deal that we're doing with Lancet or a ten-year period, and the six million they've committed very much is their largest single investment

7:19in the company, so I think that says an awful lot about their confidence in the company and this particular asset, and we've also opened it up to a RAP, Windfludge Retail Access Platform, which I'm sure a lot of you viewers will be familiar with, so that also gives the opportunity for all other shareholders, apart from Lancet, to participate in the RAP over the next two or three days, so it was opened this morning, and that includes other shareholders that did also express an interest to invest in a new asset, so we're covering them in both ways. So let me just come back to Capigluckagon. It's a really interesting asset, as I say, discovered by the team a few years ago, over the intervening period, they've been doing quite a little pre-clinical work and development work to bring the asset on and prove the principle, if you like, and this new two-year program is to take it the one step further, along that certainly

8:21at the end of that two-year program, which will include a little clinical study, we will have everything we need to take it next step further to potential licensing partners, and we've already talked to the leading players in this area, which I'll go on to describe a little more in a moment, and they've all expressed a very strong interest in what we do in Capigluckagon, because it's quite unique in its own way. So we know that we've got potential ready partners waiting, probably 18 months to years out from where we are now, so that's a nice sort of target to aim for. So let's take a step back. We're talking about treatment in the air of Type 1 diabetes, so I'm sure a lot of reviews will understand there are two types of diabetes, Type 1, Type 2. Type 1 are patients that are born with the disease, and they have to manage it from very early in their lives all the way through. Type 2 diabetes are those patients that

9:25develop the disease, generally through lifestyle, obesity, for example, is a main cause of type 2 diabetes. But if we go back to Type 1 diabetes, so patients all through their life have to constantly monitor their blood glucose levels, obviously diabetes does play havoc with those, and they can rise, they can fall. And if we go back in a number of years, traditionally, each patient would have to take a little pin prick, get a blood sample, and put it into a measure, and see what their levels are. And then, generally speaking, if their blood glucose levels were spiking, they'd have to take some insulin to bring them down. And then on occasions, if they went too low, they would need glucose to bring their levels back up. And it's a very, very difficult balance, especially when you're doing it manually. It's not that accurate. It's very difficult to manage

10:25practically on a day-to-day basis. And there are very serious long-term health consequences for diabetes when they don't get their blood glucose levels normal and stable. And it's virtually impossible when you're doing it that way. So over recent years, what has come into development are automated systems. So if you can imagine a little monitor, which patients will probably wear on their belt or on their abdomen somewhere, these automatically measure a patient's blood glucose levels. And these days, they're all controlled through an app on your phone or something similar. So you don't need to worry about every so often measuring yourself. It's a constant measurement. And alongside them, they have a little container, which has insulin in it, like a little reservoir, if you like. And whenever the little monitor detects that you need a

11:30little shot of insulin, it will give you a little shot. And it's accurate in the sense that it knows how much to give you and when to give you. So you really don't need to do anything at all. And a lot of these things now have become quite small. They're quite easy for people to wear. They've even become waterproof so that you can take them in the shower, go swimming. And that's actually important in terms of people's day-to-day lives, especially if they're doing a lot of sport or swimming and that sort of thing. So it's come on a long way to the benefit of those diabetics, type 1 diabetics. The missing piece is the glucose side. So they're very sophisticated these machines now, these devices. And so the insulin side of it is taken care of. But there are occasions when the blood glucose levels go too low and you've got to bring that you've got to have an injection of glucose. And we're still in the air of manual injection, which

12:31you know goes back quite a long time when everyone's doing that for incident. Now what a lot of the leading players are doing are developing dual hormone automatic pumps. So in other words, they'll have the monitor, they'll have a reservoir with insulin, they'll have a reservoir with glucose. Now you might think, well, that's fantastic because the monitor will measure the levels, it can either inject insulin or inject glucose. Fantastic. And that makes it even easier and more manageable for those patients. The problem with the current formats of glucose is the way they are constructed, they're very insoluble. And what we're talking about is when insulin is injected, it's done almost seamlessly, but it's either through a very, very thin tube or a needle of some kind. And the current forms of glucose gone tend to clog up the devices. So they're having real problems

13:32in developing dual hormone pumps for use for patients just because of the problems of glucose. Now what Sebastian and his team discovered with Campy Glucic Gone was a very natural form. We are a peptide based company, so it's a peptide derivative. Without going into the details of the science with you, what we've already been able to prove is that it's very soluble, it won't clog, it will stay stable for in a longer period of time. And that's exactly what these manufacturers of the devices are looking for, which I go back to what I was saying before about, we've already had conversations with these guys. They're very excited about what we can do with this because it's going to be a whole new market for them. And we're talking about a very valuable market. I mean, we're talking to multi-billions in terms of potential for Campy Glucone itself. And it's going into a market which for lots of different reasons is growing

14:34in terms of prevalence and diagnosis and everything else. So the fact that we could identify that in our portfolio when we were approached to say, look, do you have an asset which you can add real value relatively quickly for a relatively small amount of money in sort of pharmaceutical development terms? Campy Glucone ticked all those boxes and we presented it to those that were interested at the same that approached us and they were delighted actually that we had something, they weren't expecting us to have something that sort of as I say ticked all those boxes. So that was the driver behind the fundraising. The fundraisers have been done purely to fund that developed Campy Glucone. And I say because we're going through that particular FDA accelerated regulatory pathway, we can see the steps that we're going to do. That also means that there is regular news flow coming up from the Campy Glucone program. I mean, we'll be starting

15:37very shortly. We'll probably be putting out regular quarterly updates. So in a company like ours, new flow is what everybody is looking for clearly. So that will help generally in terms of our profile, our valuation, hopefully in terms of Champ Rysed Appreciation. And that comes back to the funding for landstead. We've had a number of landstead deals now. We've gained with some of them. We've not done very well on others. And generally the correlation there is down to positive news flow. And if you look at the last deal we had with landstead, which is completed last year, that was during the period we announced the new patent on P 140 and the share price had a very, very good uplift. And we ended up in advance on that program. In other words, we earned more money out of that that was originally committed. And I emphasize without any further dilution. But that is what a positive share price depreciation does. So

16:40we're very confident now of that landstead range, because we know we've got P 140 news coming up, which everyone is waiting for. And I'm waiting to announce it. And obviously positive news flow on this Campy Glucone program. And I'll say again, we're building a business here. And to me, it's an ideal opportunity to be able to broaden the portfolio, put a little bit more breadth in that portfolio and do something proactively with a very, very good asset. Well, it looks like you're going to be visiting our studio a lot more to him. And before we go, any final message for proactive viewers, but also for your investors watching this? Yeah, I think I go back to the headline that the one thing that I want to emphasize, anything that we have announced today on Campy Glucone Funding is absolutely nothing related to P 140. We are dedicated to P 140. It is our main driver, may value driver.

17:41It's the leading program in the company and it's what we're known for. I'm very pleased to be out another asset to the portfolio, which is funded and being developed. But our total focus has not been diverted. One Iota in pushing forward those licensed discussions with P 140. And I'm very, very confident we will deliver that deal. And I can say that because I'm obviously on one side of the table talking to these potential partners. And so it's very good news. I'm extremely delighted on both P 140 and how those discussions are going. But also the fact that we've got the confidence of, you know, our major shareholders to develop a sex asset. And it can only lead to incremental value for shareholders in the medium term. So thank you very much for coming through to explain all that. You're very welcome. It's in the quality of the CEO of MU Farmer.